A road grader pushes snow away from the curb while a city crew removes snow on Ninth Avenue between Sunset and Francis streets Thursday afternoon.
(
LEWIS GEYER
)

Longmont snowplows were a day late in getting to the downtown's alleys and parking lots due to a miscommunication, according to city officials.

About 5.7 inches of snow hit Longmont on Saturday, a harder storm than had been forecast for the region. That caught city road crews by surprise, public works operations manager Bob Allen said, since they had geared up expecting a "Level 1" storm of about 1 to 3 inches.

That meant the city started Saturday with nine people on plow duty instead of a full 13. It also meant that the initial emphasis was on the city's major routes -- the "arterials" -- rather than the "collector" roads that feed them, which get included in a Level 2 storm. By noon Saturday, the plow team was back to full staff and the Level 2 plan was in place, but by then, several areas had had a chance to freeze and get compacted by traffic.

"When you don't use a Level 2 deployment, but you do have a Level 2 snow, you get behind," Allen said.

Despite the nature of the storm, he said, the crews responded fast. Pictures taken at 21st Avenue and Hover Street showed the road snow-packed at 5 a.m. Saturday, but showing patches of pavement by noon, with the right-hand driving lanes mostly clear by 3 p.m.

"Turn and acceleration lanes were snow-packed, but that's pretty normal because the snow tends to get pushed to the road edges and compacted before we plow those areas," Allen said.

But because it was a weekend storm and the crews had to be abruptly brought up to strength, the usual team didn't work the downtown. Normally, Allen said, that area is done by parks workers, who have done work for the Longmont Downtown Development Authority before and know exactly what needs to be done.

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That's important since normally alleys aren't part of a snow route, but in the downtown, they can be as important to a business as the main road. But on Saturday, between downtown Coffman and Kimbark, the alleys and parking lots (both public ones and some LDDA lots that get cleared by the city) were missed entirely.

"The parks staff was not available that day and the street staff didn't know the area as well, so they didn't know the areas to be plowed," Allen said. "That's our fault in terms of communication. ... We discovered we needed to train more of our crews a little bit better."

Plows began to clear those areas Sunday, continuing into the week. City staff held a post-storm review Wednesday to work on ways to improve communication and fix the problems that had arisen.

Ninety percent of the time, Allen said, the forecast is an accurate guide to the snow plan that's needed. In theory, every storm could be staffed at Level 2 in case of a surge like Saturday's, he said, but in practice that wouldn't be practical because of costs. Over the past three years, Longmont has spent about $490,000 a year on snow removal, with $140,000 of that coming from labor expenses.

"If you treated all the smaller storms as a Level 2 deployment, your costs go up considerably," Allen said. "I would guess you would easily double your (labor) costs."

Recently, the city has begun pre-treating the principal roads with brine when a large storm is about to hit, to keep snow and ice from bonding to the road. Since Saturday's storm was bigger than expected, only Main Street and Colo. Highway 119 were treated in advance. But when it gets really cold, Allen said, the brine is less effective, so it may not have been a factor.

"Even though we didn't do it, I suspect it wouldn't have made much of a difference," he said.

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